You are feasting your eyes on the forty-seventh edition of your weekly #histSTM links list, Whewell’s Gazette, bringing you all of the best of the histories of science, medicine and technology scooped up by our every hungry editorial crew for you delectation.

The Whewell’s Gazette Editorial Staff at Feeding Time

Following the debacle that was the British general election a group of historians has published a sort of manifesto in History Today under the name ‘Historians For Britain’, claiming that Britain’s exit from the EU would be justified on the basis of the fact that Britain’s history was unique when compared to its European neighbours.

As a British historian I personally object to this manifesto on several grounds. With what right does this group claim to speak for Britain? They speak for themselves with some extremely dodgy and largely incorrect arguments and not for Britain. For any group of historians to claim to speak on behalf of an entire nation is hubris of the highest order.

As a historian of science, who also dabbles in the histories of medicine, technology and mathematics, I must firmly state that also within Britain the histories of these disciplines have a complex intertwined international history that is in no way uniquely British and to try to claim otherwise would be to pervert history.

The Whewell’s Gazette Editorial Policy

Quotes of the week:

“To remain ignorant of history is to remain forever a child” – Cicero

“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see” – Alexandra K. Trenfor

“Ancient history has an air of antiquity—it should be more modern. It’s written as if the spectator should be thinking of the backside of the picture on the wall, as if the author expected that the dead would be his readers” – Thoreau 1849

‘Life for us is not just the absence of death’. – Mary Midgley

“To err is human. To err repeatedly is research”. – @AcademicsSay

“It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise”. Wittgenstein

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies” – Groucho Marx

“But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience”. – Kant

The last man on earth walks into a bar. He looks into his beer and says, “Drink, I’d like another bartender.” – @fadesingh

2 Responses to Whewell’s Gazette: Vol. #47

I agree about it being misguided for the United Kingdom to contemplate separation from Europe but hopefully that is just politicians employing the time-honored tactic of winning elections by fanning the flames of anxiety about perceived external threats like the influx of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East.

I live in Germany, where no such referendum is possible—neither with regard to the EU as a whole nor even with regard to the EURO (a stipulation of the reunification agreement). I think the UK population should be happy that they get to decide. I am normally a fan of parliamentary democracy, but a) a referendum is a good corrective in some situations especially b) in countries with a bizarre non-linear electoral system like the UK has. Anyone who believes in democracy should have as his first goal—democracy. If the people don’t decide as you would like, or if you fear that they won’t, feel free to convince them. What is the alternative? Decide “what is best” by some non-democratic process in order to save the population from itself? That is the justification every dictator uses.

Whatever one thinks of immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East (and, increasingly, sub-Saharan Africa as well), it is not “perceived”. It is a real phenomenon. And it is a fact that a society cannot take in an arbitrarily large number of immigrants. And it is also not the case that oppressed people are all friendly and tolerant: there was recently a case where Muslim refugees pushed Christian refugees in the same boat into the sea, drowning them.